Those in favor of simplified spelling say children would learn faster and illiteracy rates would drop. Opponents say a new system would make spelling even more confusing.

Eether wae, the consept has yet to capcher th publix imajinaeshun.

It's been 100 years since Andrew Carnegie helped create the Simplified Spelling Board to promote a retooling of written English and President Theodore Roosevelt tried to force the government to use simplified spelling in its publications. But advocates aren't giving up.

They even picket the national spelling bee finals, held every year in Washington, costumed as bumble bees and hoisting signs that say "Enuf is enuf but enough is too much" or "I'm thru with through."

Thae sae th bee selebraets th ability of a fue stoodents to master a dificult sistem that stumps meny utherz hoo cuud do just as wel if speling were simpler.

"It's a very difficult thing to get something accepted like this," says Alan Mole, president of the American Literacy Council, which favors an end to "illogical spelling." The group says English has 42 sounds spelled in a bewildering 400 ways.

Doughnut also is donut; colour, honour and labour long ago lost the British "u" and the similarly derived theatre and centre have been replaced by the easier-to-sound-out theater and center.

"The kinds of progress that we're seeing are that someone will spell night 'nite' and someone will spell through 'thru,"' Mole said. "We try to show where these spellings are used and to show dictionary makers that they are used so they will include them as alternate spellings."

"Great changes have been made in the past. Systems can change," a hopeful Mole said.

Lurning English reqierz roet memory rather than lojic, he sed.

In languages with phonetically spelled words, like German or Spanish, children learn to spell in weeks instead of months or years as is sometimes the case with English, Mole said.

But education professor Donald Bear said to simplify spelling would probably make it more difficult because words get meaning from their prefixes, suffixes and roots.

"Students come to understand how meaning is preserved in the way words are spelled," said Bear, director of the E.L. Cord Foundation Center for Learning and Literacy at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Th cuntry's larjest teecherz uennyon, wuns a suporter, aulso objects.

Michael Marks, a member of the National Education Association's executive committee, said learning would be disrupted if children had to switch to a different spelling system. "It may be more trouble than it's worth," said Marks, a debate and theater teacher at Hattiesburg High School in Mississippi.

E-mail and text messages are exerting a similar tug on the language, sharing some elements with the simplified spelling movement while differing in other ways. Electronic communications stress shortcuts like "u" more than phonetics. Simplified spelling is not always shorter than regular spelling — sistem instead of system, hoep instead of hope.

Carnegie tried to moov thingz along in 1906 when he helpt establish and fund th speling bord. He aulso uezd simplified speling in his correspondens, and askt enywun hoo reported to him to do the saem.

Roosevelt tried to get the government to adopt simpler spellings for 300 words but Congress blocked him. He used simple spellings in all White House memos, pressing forward his effort to "make our spelling a little less foolish and fantastic."

The Chicago Tribune aulso got into th act, uezing simpler spelingz in th nuezpaeper for about 40 years, ending in 1975. Plae-riet George Bernard Shaw, hoo roet moest of his mateerial in shorthand, left muny in his wil for th development of a nue English alfabet.

Carnegie, Dewey, Roosevelt and Shaw's work followed attempts by Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster and Mark Twain to advance simpler spelling. Twain lobbied The Associated Press at its 1906 annual meeting to "adopt and use our simplified forms and spread them to the ends of the earth." AP declined.

But for aul th hi-proefiel and skolarly eforts, the iedeea of funy-luuking but simpler spelingz didn't captivaet the masez then — or now.

"I think that the average person simply did not see this as a needed change or a necessary change or something that was ... going to change their lives for the better," said Marilyn Cocchiola Holt, manager of the Pennsylvania department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

Ugh. Please, please, PLEASE no. This simplified spelling garbage bothers the hell out of me. I'd much rather type & write in a version of the English langauge that has been largely similar and commonly accepted over the past ~200 years.

Those in favor of simplified spelling say children would learn faster and illiteracy rates would drop.

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Those people, and the ever-at-risk children they champion for would do well to read more books, where they will slowly become accustomed to root words to help them better understand the strange multisyllabic words they will encounter when they read something beyond a third-grade reading level...or a text message.

I spent more time trying to read the "easier" spelled words than the properly spelled words. In other words, what a horrible idea.

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That's because you like, know how to read. I wonder if these people have thought about the fact that it would be harder for some 90% of the population to adapt to this gobbledygook than it would be to just teach kids in grade school how to fucking read and write properly in the first place.

Typical. Kids can't pass a test? Don't try to teach them better, make the test easier. Kids can't get a passing grade? Don't focus on teaching them and helping them to make that grade (god forbid!), lower the passing grade. Kids can't spell? Don't put the time and effort into teaching them how to spell properly, just make the words 'easier' to spell. Education trends like this is why there are so many goddamn stupid people and why their numbers continue to increase. The education system is more focused on making things easier for children than teaching vital concepts.

I mean no disrespect here guys but it its not like you yanks don’t already spell loads of shit wrong.

I mean can you imagine how difficult communication would become, unless they some how plan to force this crap on the rest of the world to. I mean I am dyslexic here, so I know my spelling and grammar aren’t always the best but damn it if suddenly half the people I know on line started typing that rubbish I wouldn’t have a clue what they were on about.

What is with this dumbing everything down to the lowest common denominator? Must me stoop to the lack of intelligence so that others feel normal? What is this Harrison Bergeron crap? How about teaching in a more productive way than maeking evereone tipe liek this?